Law and Literature

ENG 4903.50 FALL 2009

We read some texts differently from others. Some texts mean more to us.
Some people consider certain texts binding on them in ways that they do
not feel other texts are. For instance, for many people The Ten Commandments
mean something that the words in what might be called non-scripture do not.
If you receive a subpoena, to use a different example, you are not free
to interpret the words any way you wish, nor to ignore them (without penalty).
Legal texts seem to have a different quality and power to them from what
many people would attribute to poetry and prose. The aim of this course
is to explore the ways in which language, legal and literary, becomes binding
on us, impacts us, becomes meaningful for our lives, sometimes against our
will.

The course involves matters of ethics (our habits), and will become a guided
journey whose theme will be (1) the power of words (e.g., the judge's sentence,
where "sentence" means something different from the sentences
you talk about as an English major), and (2) the force and violence of meaning.
People trained in the law think differently form those trained in literature.
Some have thought that the two ways of training might be informative if
juxtaposed. Thus, many universities and law schools offer courses in law
and literature. Often, the students trained in the law feel uncomfortable
with the way literary students proceed, and the literary students find what
takes place in law school to be an alien way of thinking. We will find out
what makes legal interpretation different from literary interpretation with
the aim, among other things, of enriching our interpretive skills.

The photograph above is from Flickr Creative Commons and is avaiable for
public use. The photograph is a cropped portion of The Spirit of Justice
by C. Paul Jennewein, and is located outside the Rayburn Office Building
in Washington, D.C. A seated female figure with long hair is dressed in
long robes, a cape, and sandals. She holds up a torch symbolizing truth
with her proper right hand. Her proper left hand rests on a nude male child
standing to her proper left, symbolizing that Justice is tempered by Love.

Textbooks

All the textbooks listed are required, and are available from the TWU
Bookstore. Please purchase these particular editions, so that we can
all be working from the same texts, referring to the same page numbers,
etc.
• Edward Levi, Introduction to Legal Reasoning (U of Chicago
P)
• Plessy v. Ferguson, ed. Brook Thomas (Bedford, St. Martin's
Press)
• Franz Kafka, The Trial (Mitchell translation from Schocken
Books)
• Edgar Allan Poe, Great Tales and Poems (Pocket Books)
• Arthur C. Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: Complete Novels and Stories, Vol.
I (Bantam)
• Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter (Harper Collins)
• Luis Fernando Verissimo, Borges and the Eternal Orangutans
(New Directions)
In addition to the texts, you will be required to read some articles that
will be made available to you online.

A Completely Online Course

Please be aware that "Law and Literature" is a completely online
course. In general, online courses tend to be more difficult for students,
since there are no regular face-to-face meetings with the instructor. Online
courses require a level of self-discipline and scheduling that is different
from typical face-to-face classes.

Film about Sherlock Holmes on the Horizon

Holmes serves as one of the key fictional examples in law and literature,
for Holmes brings science to bear on detection, and a particular kind of
science that some of us are familiar with through televsions programs like
"CSI." The ongoing fascination with Holmes extends not only to
films, but also to literature. For instance, you might be familiar with
Laurie
King's mystery novels that involve a woman named Mary Russell who becomes
Holmes' partner in crime detection.